The Brightest Hour
by CaptainSammish
Summary: -"He forced himself to suck in a strangled breath and release it. That wasn’t so bad. Do it again." Sebastian thinks that he just might be dying. One-shot. Rated 'M' for language.


A/N - Witness my first and probably only Cruel Intentions fic! Hooray, and all that. If you like it, please review. If you don't like it, review anyway and tell me where I goofed. Thanks for reading! Oh, and I don't own anything Cruel Intentions-related.

The title of the fic is from the Percy Shelley poem, 'The Invitation'.

* * *

Fuck, it hurt. He had never hurt like this before. This was what it felt like when you still looked okay on the outside, but inside, you were so destroyed that nobody could fix it.

Like when your heart was broken.

He didn't think that his heart was broken, not anymore, because Annette wouldn't be looking at him like that if she hadn't forgiven him. But his heart didn't seem to be the problem, because he was still bleeding, and he could feel it soaking warmly through his clothing. He wondered if he could get someone to take his shirt to the dry-cleaners for him, since he wasn't feeling very well at the present. Maybe someone could take it and clean the blood out and bring it back to him here, so that he wouldn't have to move. Maybe Annette would do it for him. He'd just saved her life, after all.

Someone was saying his name, but Annette's face was his anchor to the universe and he couldn't look away. It took a few seconds for the voice to register as Ronald's. Fucking _awesome_. He was going to go out listening to this idiot apologize for knocking some of his teeth out. Apology unaccepted, asshole. He had had _nice_ teeth, for Christ's sake. And anyway, he had been a selfish prick all his life, up until that completely honest moment right at the end. He was going to go back to being a selfish prick now because honesty got you thrown over the roofs of taxi cabs. Honesty was a whisper: _Well, you did the right thing for the right reasons. But I'm still going to fuck you hard, Sebastian. Thanks for coming out._

The real bitch was that he didn't even regret it. He was annoyed as hell, though. Dying _hurt_. And he still had things to do. He hadn't read War and Peace.

It had gotten dark while Ronald had been talking. Sebastian contemplated whether he had gone blind or if he had simply stopped having the strength to keep his eyes open. Possibly both. He had heard that eyesight was the first thing to go. He could still feel Annette's hand, and that was good, because it was as solid an anchor as her face had been. He wondered when he would stop being able to feel her hand, too. It didn't worry him, much. Her voice was in his head and in his ears and all around him, and that would be an anchor, too, when everything else was gone.

Had he told her that he loved her? He thought that he could remember doing it.

His lungs were copping out on him. He considered whether or not to give up smoking. Then he remembered that smoking wasn't what was killing him. Consider giving up bleeding, he advised himself.

He forced himself to suck in a strangled breath and release it. That wasn't so bad. Do it again.

He wondered why there were no sirens. Maybe he wasn't dying. Maybe he was dead already. But both of those statements were negated by how goddamn much it hurt to breathe. So, he must still be here. But he was on the home stretch.

What would Kathryn think? He pictured her in that green satin dress she'd worn to the reception when her mother had married his father. He always pictured her in that dress. _We're the sort of people who push people in front of cars,_ she said, one hand posed on her hip. _We don't jump out in front of them. In a lifetime of fucked up things, this one absolutely tops all the rest of them. That's probably why it's killing you._

One day, they'd find her on her bathroom floor with enough empty Vicodin bottles around her to know that it hadn't been an accident.

Fleetingly, he wondered when he had stopped being able to hear his own heartbeat throbbing in his ears.

He thought she'd be perversely pleased to know that his last thought had been of her.


End file.
